The inventive concept relates generally to semiconductor systems. More particularly the inventive concept relates to semiconductor systems including a heterogeneous memory module capable of transferring data between internally disposed memory resources without occupying resources (e.g., system bus(es) and processing components) external to the heterogeneous memory module.
A heterogeneous memory module includes two or more different types of memory modules. For example, a heterogeneous memory module may include a dynamic random access memory (DRAM) which corresponds to a memory for storing data in a volatile memory cell, and a NAND flash-based storage device (NFSD) which corresponds to a memory for storing data in a nonvolatile memory cell.
There is a need to perform data swap operations between the DRAM and the NFSD. For example, if a page fault occurs in the DRAM, it is necessary to perform a swap-in operation for transferring data stored in the NFSD to the DRAM. If the memory of the DRAM is exceeded, it is necessary to perform a swap-out operation for transferring data from the DRAM to the NFSD to secure more storage space.
Therefore, there is a demand for a method of efficiently performing data swap operations in a semiconductor system including a heterogeneous memory module.